Glasgow has been named Britain’s safest city in an international quality-of-life league table, despite being the murder capital of Europe.

The annual ranking, used by businesses to assess the safety of employees who travel abroad, has ranked Glasgow 43rd out of 250 cities surveyed.

Even though it is one of Europe’s most violent cities, Glasgow finished ahead of London and Birmingham as well as European capitals including Paris and Rome.

Researchers examined factors including overall crime rates, law enforcement, the city’s relationship with other countries and internal stability.

“Employers want to know if it is safe to send their employees to Glasgow. This is a really good result for the city,” said Slagin Parakatil, a senior researcher at Mercer, the New York-based consultancy firm that compiled the index.

While Parakatil said he was aware of the Glasgow’s reputation for violence he said the city had a much lower level of other crimes, such as robbery, than many southern European cities.

Scott Taylor, chief executive of the Glasgow City Marketing Bureau, said he was delighted with the result. “Safety is a huge factor for most tourism destinations and it is good to see Glasgow performing so well among its competitors,” he said.

However, Ian Davidson, Labour MP for Glasgow South West, said crime remained a serious problem in many communities in the city: “I am honestly surprised by Glasgow’s ranking. If you conduct a survey on the basis of the city centre, the office district and the posh suburbs where these employees would probably be living, the result is probably accurate. Glasgow is a safe city for the prosperous. This is definitely not the case for the whole of the city.”

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